


Bring Me Home

by OddlyExquisite



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Rogue One Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 00:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9212195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddlyExquisite/pseuds/OddlyExquisite
Summary: Baze Malbus was a doubter.But then, he meets Chirrut Imwe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1) First and foremost, a very grateful thank you to my Beta readers: Merry_Amelie and Aidava. Y'all rock!
> 
> 2) Written to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIv1RyIuF1s

* * *

 

 

Baze Malbus was a doubter.

He hadn't started out that way, but the Force hadn't done him much good when he'd believed in it. And in the end, did it really matter if he had forsaken the Force, or if the Force had forsaken him?

It had been easier than he'd thought: one day, when the sky had been blue and clear, he'd simply abandoned his Temple duties, and left. He'd just walked until his legs had given out. He'd trudged through the Path of Judgments, shedding the black and red robes of his order, leaving them behind in the dust.

The Jedi were gone, Jedha City taken, their sacred places defiled...and the only response to their prayers was silence.

He'd had enough.

He'd left the Temple of the Whills (the day had been blue and clear, he remembered), and behind him there were whispers, but that had always been a constant on this cold, desert moon.

 _Baze the Dissenter,_ they called him.

_The Skeptic._

_He-Who-Shuns-the-Light._

_The Once-Great Guardian._

And he accepted those names; he wore them with belligerent pride, despite the weight of them hanging heavy across his shoulders. He knew what the monks whispered at his back when he passed them by in the streets, knew that a few of those holy guardians still prayed for him, still reached out to his presence in the Force. He was their fallen haven, their corrupted solace, and he carried himself as if he'd born that burden his entire life.

_Faithless._

Yes. Yes, he was.

_Devout warrior._

_I am, I was, I am..._

_Traitor._

_Yes._

He hadn't expected it to be so easy.

He hadn't expected it to be so hard.

 

*********

A sharp kick to the ribs startles him into wakefulness.

“Here he is,” a voice sneers, booted foot pinning his shoulder in the dirt, “the holy vagrant.”

He is surrounded by a handful of men; he can just make out their soot-stained faces in the half-light of the street lamps. The patches on their uniforms and the dirt on their hands tell him that they are kyber miners. They were bold, to be out past curfew in these parts.

“What do you want?” he rasps, glancing toward the pile of rubble that hides his blaster. He can still smell traces of explosives and something metallic on the air, can still see the shadowy smear of the Temple silhouette against the starlit sky, still standing. (And once upon a time, he might have thought it meant something.)

“We're just here to have a chat,” one of the assailants answers with a grin, heaving his mining shovel onto his shoulder.

The man with the steel-toed boots grinds his heel into the assassin's clavicle and Baze fights to keep from howling with pain. His shoulder is dislocated; he can feel it.

“You fucking _khie'yen,_ thinking you can just give up and walk away.” The boot is removed from Baze's shoulder, only to press down on his throat. Baze struggles for breath, choking on the angry words he's wanted to scream since the day he shed his Temple robes.

_Fuck you, I'm still fighting._

“You coward.”

_Traitor._

_I am, I am, I was..._

“You called us your brothers and then you left us to die.”

 _I am still_ **here.**

Baze knocks the foot away from his face and the man stumbles, off balance. In an instant, he is on his feet, but doesn't run. He never ran. He never would.

He raises his fist and spits at their feet. _“Kol khara, ya kalb._ ”

His first punch is nothing compared to the blow to his head that leaves him stunned and shaking, prostrate on the ground.

 

*********

“There you are.”

Baze stirs, uncurling himself from where he'd huddled in a shopkeeper's doorway for the night. He gropes for his blaster; it is still hours before dawn and even in holy Jedha the lightless hours were dangerous.

He opens his swollen eyes as best he can, and starts at the sight of the Temple monk, kyber staff tapping before him as he approaches, robes dragging in the red dust of the streets. Baze didn't remember any blind monks at the Temple, but then, he's been gone for years now.

“Your hair is longer; I almost didn't recognize you.” The sightless monk is gazing somewhere above Baze's head, grinning.

Baze stares hard at the man and says, “I don't know you.”

(He doesn't ask how the blind monk found him because he doesn't want to hear the answer.)

“No,” the monk agrees, his mirth entirely out of place in this occupied city. It would only be a matter of time before the Temple fell, too. “But that may change.”

“Doubt it,” Baze snaps, turning his back to the strange monk as he lies down again.

The monk laughs. Baze can hear the tap-tap-tapping of the kyber staff in the rich, red dust.

“Stubborn as always, Baze Malbus.”

 

*********

Baze starts to see more and more monks walking the streets of Jedha. It is the beginning of the end, he knows. They never look him in the eye, but then, he appears different now without the weight of enlightenment on his brow, the mantle of holiness tight around his throat. He looks better this way, he tells himself, more human.

He sees the blind monk fairly often after that, sitting on the Temple steps with his staff resting against his shoulder. And every time Baze passes by, the monk's eyes unerringly find him and call out in greeting. The assassin pays him no mind, for the most part. (He doesn't ask how the blind man sees him; he never will, because he doesn't want to know.)

He doesn't ask how he is able to sense whether or not the monk is there, before even seeing him.

 

*********

One day, he approaches the blind man.

“You've been watching me,” Baze says, because it is the only thing he can think to say with those startlingly blue eyes turned his way.

The monk grins and the laugh lines at his eyes crinkle. “You are a radiant being in the Force, Baze Malbus. You are not hard to find.”

Baze opens his mouth to deny it, to lash out, to say ' _No. The Force didn't want me, so I left it behind. I am no luminous being. I do not belong to the Light anymore_ '.

_Traitor._

_But no, never that..._

He wants to say it all, but...he doesn't. In the end, he settles for a gruff, “What are you smiling for?”

The monk's smile widens, open and childish and impossibly innocent.

“You'll see,” he says.

 

*********

Baze Malbus was a doubter, and he preferred it that way.

It was easier.

(It was harder.)

It had happened gradually, and then all at once, the way a kite is torn from a child's hands, the way a sandstorm buries a village. The sand had always been there, hadn't it? And what of the wind?

The more he'd given, the more he'd been forced to give up, and that was no way to live.

Baze Malbus was a doubter, and he preferred it that way.

 

*********

One day, the monks are gone.

Baze is strangely relieved to find Chirrut huddled in the same doorway where they'd first met, months ago. It is clear that the monk has been there for some time, dirty and shivering, skinnier than he'd been when Baze had left Jedha for his most recent assignment.

“Where are they?” Baze growls, gripping the blind monk by his too-thin arms, “WHERE ARE THEY?”

Baze looks toward the Temple when Chirrut doesn't answer, and he feels his stomach drop. There is smoke, too much of it, and a structure that looks like a pyre.

The assassin releases his grip on the man and stumbles to the side of the street where he dry heaves before finally emptying his stomach of dinner. Chirrut approaches him a moment later.

“They are one with the Force, brother.”

_They are one with the Force..._

_I should have been there._

_Faithless._

_I am..._

“You're no Jedi,” Baze spits out, “They're gone. You're just a dreamer.”

Chirrut turns his face to the sky. “Maybe. Maybe you are, too.”

“Doubt it,” Baze mumbles, wiping the sweat from his eyes.

 

*********

Eventually, Baze's visits with Chirrut become a habit. Baze brings him bits of food for dinner, if only to make sure the damned monk eats something. (He sees Chirrut throughout the day, sitting on the scorched Temple steps, blessing passersby and reading palms for coins.) Chirrut never seems surprised, but Baze can tell that he is grateful all the same.

As for Baze, he gets used to being the only thing Chirrut is ever careful about. (And even then, Baze learns, Chirrut is fairly reckless. At first, he thinks it is because the monk has nothing left to lose; later, he realizes, it is precisely the opposite.)

“Don't you ever think before starting a fight?” Baze asks reprovingly, tending the monk's wounds after an exhausting day of tracking the Black Sun gang to their home territory. They'd found their target, but the fight had gone badly with Chirrut taking the brunt of the damage. “Bacta's expensive, you ass.”

Chirrut doesn't so much as flinch when Baze applies the cold gel to his skin. “I fear nothing. All is as the Force wills it.”

“Yeah, maybe that's the problem,” Baze mutters.

“Ah, the philosopher speaks! Tell me what secrets hide behind that smiling face, Oh, Great One!”

_Once Great..._

“Shut it,” Baze grumbles, turning away from the monk's cheeky grin.

These days, something genuine and familiar unfolds in his chest when he is with the monk; something that feels suspiciously like warmth, and friendship, and home. And he thinks Chirrut can sense it, because the blind monk laughs at him; laughs like he can hear the things Baze keeps locked behind his grizzled hair and gruff demeanor.

(Like how he's always drawn some comfort from the sound of Chirrut's meditations at night; like how the sound of Chirrut's laughter is sometimes the only reason he can think about the Empire and still breathe; like how he's terrified of the fact that, for the first time since leaving the Temple, he has something to lose now, too.)

 

*********

At night, Baze dreams of the Force.

He sees it as sparks of green and silver, pulsing in the veins of every being, the lifeblood of the universe. It is wrapped around the pillars of the Temple, around the braids of every street urchin in Coruscant; Baze sees it cradling the bodies of fallen Jedi, sees it woven into the hairbands his mother made for him, sees it dancing in Chirrut's smiling eyes.

Upon waking, he finds Chirrut kneeling alone in meditation, his voice a low chant. When Baze sits up, Chirrut turns.

Baze stares into Chirrut's sky-colored eyes and wonders why those sparks hadn't been blue.

 

*********

“I have dreams about the day we met,” Chirrut whispers to him, one evening. The monk is huddled deep beneath the blankets that they share, curled into the heat of one body next to another. Baze turns over and buries his wind-chilled nose into the crook of his arm. They sleep close for warmth; Baze can feel the monk's soft breath against his cheek.

 _Just a fool, dreaming_ , Baze thinks to himself, startled when he feels Chirrut's silent breath of laughter against his face, as if the blind monk had heard that very thought.

“Tell me why you stayed,” the monk asks aloud; a gentle demand.

Baze thinks for a long time before answering. “The Empire took everything from me.”

He cannot see Chirrut's gaze, but he can feel it. “I was going to leave. But I didn't.”

“Why?” Chirrut repeats.

“I don't know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“ _Chirrut_.”

“Why didn't you leave?” Chirrut presses, sitting up beneath the blankets, “Why not leave if you don't know why you stayed?”

“I am not a traitor.” Baze's voice is a low growl.

_Faithless._

_Yes, but..._

“I know that.”

“It was the Force that abandoned this city,” Baze continues, eyes burning, “not the guardians. And even if we had, it would have made no difference. It wasn't just the Temple, or the guardians. It was the Jedi, the Temple on Coruscant...it was the children.”

“Aahhh.” Chirrut pauses, mulling over the new information. “So that's it.”

“Isn't that enough?” Baze throws a forearm across his eyes. “Wasn't it for you?”

The blind monk slowly slides beneath the blankets again. An indeterminable amount of time passes before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is as soft as a breeze through willow branches.

He says, “We are the last two, you and I. It is no coincidence that we found each other here.”

Baze wants to ask what he means, wants to say that it was pure chance that they'd found each other, but he doesn't. He wants to ask what proof Chirrut has, wants to tell him that those assumptions were what got the guardians killed in the first place. Wants to tell him that, despite everything, he'd almost made the mistake of having the very same thought himself.

“The Force only does for you what it can do through you. Its only limits are those that belong to the beings who seek to understand it.”

“I wasn't weak, Chirrut, I was tired.”

“You were angry. But the Force was with you.”

“You're wrong.”

“Just as you are with the Force.”

“Not anymore.”

“Our belief is not a matter of choice, but a matter of conviction, a matter of heart. And you stayed, Baze. Because belief that does not leave room for doubt is mere superstition. It is no coincidence that we two found each other here.”

Baze is tired. He turns his back to the monk and pillows his head on his arm. He thinks of Chirrut, youthful and wise, strong and merciful, and wonders if he'd ever been like that. If he listens, and can just make out the words Chirrut mutters to himself every night before sleep.

_I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me..._

 

*********

They first see Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor on the streets in Jedha City, and immediately the guardians are aware of them.

“What do you think they're doing here?” Baze asks, absently toying with the hairband Chirrut had woven for him, days ago.

Chirrut shrugs. “What everyone else is doing. People find what they love and let it kill them. Do you think they're any different?”

Baze grunts. “Doubt it,” he says.

Chirrut grins up at the assassin before turning back to the street. “You there! I'll trade you a story for that necklace you're wearing...”

 

*********

Chirrut comes to him when they are waiting for Jyn to convince the Council of the necessity for action. They stand in the busy spaceport hangar, doing their best to stay out of the way of the rebel pilots and their droids. It seems that in the constant hustle and bustle of the rebellion, no one had thought to include seating for the Rebel Base.

The blind monk stands close to him, hands atop his ever-present staff. Baze had not realized before now that life was more than battle and rest; that parts of it were composed of tiny, liminal pockets of silence where he could feel the warmth of Chirrut next to him, hear the sound of his even breath. Watching the steady, frantic movement of the base makes him feel very, very small. It is only Chirrut's body, strong and straight, that keeps him from collapsing in on himself, keeps him from thinking about the place of deep knowing that tells him: _You won't survive what comes next._

“We are radiant beings, you and I,” Chirrut states, matter-of-factly.

Baze nods, and knows that this, too, will come to an end. He feels strangely calm; detached, as if he had known all along. As if he were prepared.

“All is as the Force wills it.”

“We won't make it back to Jedha,” Baze says. The certainty of it nearly crushes him.

“We are one with the Force and the Force is with us...what reason have we to fear this end?”

“Maybe,” Baze says absently, staring out into the hangar, “Maybe we're just dreamers.”

As Jyn approaches, Chirrut takes hold of Baze's hand and squeezes hard, bringing him back to the present.

“Doubt it,” the monk says, smiling.

 

*****

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
